Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are not enough for many denizens of the twenty-first century. In their search for a more palatable Jesus, novelists such as Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code, feminist theologians such as Elaine Pagels, and …Read More

I’ve got great news — I just saved a bundle on my car insurance. This pop-cultural punchline might just expose a real problem we have in our Christian sub-culture: we don’t know what the good news is.The confusion, from …Read More

Quick. What are the Gospels? Time is up. Did you answer: “The Gospels are the biographies of Jesus Christ?” When we read the Gospels as biographies only, we basically look at them like trees apart from the proverbial forest. There …Read More

Recently, an acquaintance of mine gathered these statistics on the choices available today: 200 cable channels; 255 ways to order a Big Mac; 19,000 possible combinations for coffee at Starbucks and 78,998 for ice cream and toppings at Cold Stone Creamery; …Read More

Anyone who has ever attended a Sunday school class knows that Jonah was the man who was eaten alive by a fish and then vomited out three days later. But that’s about the extent of most people’s understanding of this …Read More

The post-exilic prophets include Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and probably Joel. They convey the message of God for this period of time with cumulative clarity since they come at the end of a long age of prophetic indictment against the people. These …Read More

Ezekiel and Daniel experienced exile. The words slip over the tongue with such ease. We are glad to know this “brute fact” about these two prophets. Next time we get involved in a Bible trivia quiz, we will be sure …Read More

Genealogies are hardly spellbinding. Perhaps, like me, you are tempted to skip them in your Bible reading. Yet genealogies are a significant part of God’s infallible Scriptures. They, too, are “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in …Read More

I confess the Song of Solomon has always intimidated me as a preacher. Its vivid and excitable statements of marital sexual intimacy and the penchant of commentators to interpret it allegorically have combined to make me cautious. Even the ancients recommended …Read More

In the arena of biblical studies, there are five books that are generally included under the heading of “wisdom literature” or “the poetic books of the Old Testament.” They are the books of Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and …Read More